This disclosure relates to toy vehicles, particularly but not exclusively those of the type that might be played with by children. A toy vehicle may include a manually chargeable drive unit, configured so that on discharge of a charged drive unit the vehicle runs at a speed selected by the user from a plurality of available speeds.
Many different types of toy vehicles have previously been proposed. Toy vehicles with mechanisms for storing energy to drive the vehicle are found in Great Britain Patent Nos. 2135895 and 2148138 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,503,009; 2,006,156; 2,604,727; 2,830,403; 4,516,954; 4,541,815; 4,568,309; 4,680,021, 4,786,269 and 6,450,857, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,450,857 (to Imagic, Inc. of Tokyo, Japan) discloses a four-wheel drive toy vehicle that can be pushed by hand to spin a flywheel contained within the body of the toy. On release of the vehicle, energy stored in the spinning flywheel is communicated, by a series of gears, to each of the four vehicle wheels and the vehicle moves backwards or forwards (depending on in which direction the vehicle was pushed to charge the drive unit) until the energy stored in the flywheel has discharged. This toy vehicle includes driven front wheels that can move vertically up and down to enable the vehicle to drive over small obstacles and rougher surfaces without coming to a halt.